The
Ethnobotanical Uses of the
Genus Viola by Native Americans
Written by: Scott D. Appell
Previously Published In The Violet Gazette, Summer 2000, B1=3, P4.

Scott D. Appell is currently Director of Education for the
Horticultural Society of New York, a member of the Publications
Committee of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and a Board Member
of The American Violet Society. He is a contributing editor to Smith
& Hawken's Book of Outdoor Gardening and Rodale Press' 1001
Ingenious Gardening Ideas as well as botanical consultant for Gardens by
the Sea: Creating a Tropical Paradise, published by The Garden Club of
Palm Beach. He has written three books: Pansies, Lilies and Tulips, all
published by Friedman/Fairfax Publishers, Inc. (New York). His latest
work, Orchids (also published by Friedman/Fairfax) is slated for winter
2001. In addition, he is guest editor/writer for Landscaping Indoors:
Bringing the Outdoors, a part of the 21st-Century Gardening Series
handbooks published by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, also slated for
winter 2001. Scott Appell lives, writes and teaches horticulture in New
York City . His private horticultural consultation company is called The
Green Man,

We admire them flowering in cultivated gardens, fields and glades
or abandoned farm steads. We view their images incorporated into the
Medieval Unicorn tapestries hung in the Cloisters or Cluny Museums. We
hear them mentioned in theatrical performances ranging from
Shakespeare's Hamlet, King John, Twelfth Night, Midsummer Night's Dream
and Cymbeline to Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady. We even partake of
them al fresco in fashionable tidbits or candied upon lavish
confections. They are the violets, the genus Viola. Although we are all
well aware of violets in these various guises, few of us are cognizant
of their ethnobotanical (i.e. medicinal, nutritional and folkloric) uses
among our Native Americans. We will review both indigenous and
introduced species of violets. Whether we refer to our various neolithic
emigrant populace as Native Americans, First Americans, American Indians
or simply Indians, is a very personal matter, indeed, bogged down by
intense political, moral and etymological parameters. In this simple
report I will utilize the tribal appellations.

Chief
Wilma Mankiller,
First Woman Leader of the Cherokee Nation

Key to The People

As you peruse this elementary format, notice how so many different
species of Viola are used for the exact same purpose by different tribes
of First Americans. Here is a brief description of the various tribes I
refer to:

Blackfoot.

The Blackfoot hunted over the region of Montana, Alberta
and Saskatchewan. Blackfoot is a common spelling in Canada, whereas
Blackfeet is more common in the United States.

Carrier

Southern. Near Ulkatcho, in northwestern British
Columbia.

Cherokee

The Cherokees are found throughout most of western North
Carolina, and in northwestern Georgia.